


Now I Lay Me Down

by zenelly



Category: One Piece
Genre: Body Horror, Death as a main theme, Gen, Horror, Non permanent death, Personification of Death, Psychological Horror, Visions of death, nobody dies permanently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4873861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenelly/pseuds/zenelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is wrong.</p><p>He can’t tell what it is anymore, but Brook remembers stopping at an island. They were there, and Brook remembers stepping off the ship, marveling aloud at the beauteous wonder of the huge trees there, the flowers with petals as large as his head. For all their size, everything was still almost delicate, shifting enticingly in the breeze.</p><p>They are not on an island anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now I Lay Me Down

**Author's Note:**

> I did this for the One Piece Reverse Bang! Which was so much fun, really it was, and I wish I had time to write more for this, but several Real Life Things got very much in the way.
> 
> My lovely artist, kyuunonana, is amazing and wonderful, and you can find [the pictures Nana drew over here](http://kyuunonana.tumblr.com/post/129920149126/he-should-have-stayed-in-the-shadows-forever)!! Augh i'm so glad because Brook is one of my favorite characters pretty much of all time and I'm so glad I got to go into some of that here.
> 
> Note: this does include a fair amount of gruesome horror, body horror, and the potential for some derealization. Please be careful when you read.

_Brook!_

There is a clatter of bones against sand, distant yet perfectly audible, and Brook would frown if he could, setting the teacup into the saucer with a touch more caution than before. He looks out from the crow’s nest of the Thousand Sunny. Luffy had just called him, hadn’t he? That was most certainly Luffy’s voice. If Brook just leans over just a bit more, he’s sure he can see Luffy right down there. Just a bit more. Not too much.

(Why sand, though? They’re on the Sunny. Nowhere near any beaches. But Brook definitely heard sand and waves.)

So he does lean out, and sure enough, Luffy is down below, waving cheerfully. Brook lifts one bony hand to wave back, not thinking about his balance at all.

He’ll be able to pull himself back up.

Except where he isn’t able to.

Brook leans out, feels how tenuous his grasp is on the railing, something it’s never been before. He’s been a pirate for over seventy years. He knows intimately how to get around a ship, even during the worst weather.

But Luffy called him, and he is leaning over and falling, and when he lands with a thud, there’s a moment where Luffy’s face twists strangely, horrified. But for all the distress in his mouth, his eyes only regard Brook with a steady satisfaction.

Brook pops up, brushes himself off, laughs merrily. “Whoops, seems like there’s a slight chance for a bone shower today! Now, what did you need me for, Luffy-san?”

Luffy’s face goes from a rictus of horror to something confused. “I thought-.” He cuts himself off, tilts his head to the side. His eyes are dark and wide in the midday light.  “Are you okay?”

“Good as bones! I drink my milk all the time, you know!”

“Huh.”

And then Luffy turns to leave.

Brook stands alone on the deck of the Thousand Sunny, the grass lawn waving gently in the breeze around his feet, and he tilts his head back to feel the sun’s warmth. That was odd. Maybe Luffy had just forgotten what he called out for Brook for. Maybe. Still, Brook suppresses a shiver.

* * *

 

The day doesn’t get any less odd after that.

Zoro accidentally runs him through when he comes by for training. Franky lets off a huge burst of steam that would have melted the skin from Brook’s bones if he had any. Usopp had a deadly fungal outbreak, and with each one, Brook just laughs it off, as he does. He’s already dead. There’s nothing to be scared of since he’s dead. He doesn’t have to have the same sort of care about himself, doesn’t have to worry about mortality, that tricky tricky thing that so many people are obsessed with.

And each and every time, he gets this budding sense of frustration, as though something isn’t going the way it’s supposed to.

As though _Brook_ isn’t behaving the way he’s supposed to.

Which is completely ridiculous. Brook is doing exactly what his fruit allows him to do. He survives. He endures. Long past the point of reason or past the point of health. Each attempt on his lidf, which really they are attempts on his life, no matter how he tries to explain them away, grow more and more violent.

And Brook hates it. God Brook hates it. He has seen this too much on his own for everything to begin gunning for him like this normally.

And that’s about when the fight starts.

He’s separated from the rest of the crew almost instantly, fighting against this horde ofr never ending enemies, pirates and marines alike, no other distcitingtion other than the fact that they’re all fighting him. Brook bears dozens of blows that to any other person would be almost certainly fatal. Dodges getting exploded, because that, that would probably damage his body beyond any hope of actually returning to it, all while desperately trying to get back to his crew.

They need him. They _need_ him. If he’s having a hard time…. Sure, the monster trio would be able to handle themselves, but the rest of them...

No, he can’t let them die.

He can’t do it, he can’t let his crew die. Not this time. Not again.

Around him, the world seems to slow down, coming to a halt where not even the air moves. The enemies that had seemed so vicious and troubling before pause, weapons raised, then lowered, slowly, as they all turn to consider Brook with dark, empty eyes.

 _Ah,_ Brook thinks he hears, before everything goes black.

_Brook, please!_

Brook jolts awake at the sound of his name. Or, awake isn’t the right word. He already was awake. But he jolts more into awareness. He’s up in the Sunny’s Crow’s nest again. That fight must have all been a terrible dream. Shivering, Brook lowers himself down out of the nest with shaking, clattering hands.

He needs some tea.

* * *

 

“Oh, Brook, there you are!” Sanji says. He is standing in front of the stove. A pot is boiling in front of him, sending curled wreaths of steam to mix with the pale white-blue smoke around his face, and Brook moves into the kitchen with unsteady steps. Sanji watches him, raises his visible eyebrow before taking his cigarette out of his mouth, and holds it to the side, cocked easily between two fingers. “Are you okay? You don’t seem like you’re doing so well.”

Brook tries to laugh. He does. It comes out as a harsh bark of sound as he lowers himself into a chair. “I’m a bit rattled. Bad dream.”

Sanji watches him, but nods, turning back to the stove. “I understand. Give me a second and I can heat up some tea for you.”

“Ahh, thank you, Sanji-san. That would be wonderful. A bit of tea would definitely do the trick.”

The cook hums, another stream of smoke escaping from his nostrils as he does, turning to pour some boiling water for Brook. The sweet fragrant scent of chamomile is mixed almost nauseatingly with the smell of nicotine and tar. Brook watches Sanji set the cup down in front of him with a strange cotton surrounding his thoughts.

Almost from a distance, Brook hears himself say, “You shouldn’t smoke, Sanji-san. That stuff kills, you know.”

Sanji grins. “Well, something has to kill me eventually, doesn’t it?”

Brook goes still.

“I’m sure you understand,” Sanji continues, unconcerned as he turns back to the stove. “‘Cause you’re dead, right?”

Sanji laughs.

There’s a ringing where his hearing usually is, his vision is static around the edges. Brook gets up to put his cup in the sink. That much he does manage to accomplish.

Sanji is leaning over the pot, seemingly smelling the steam that comes out. He doesn’t notice, or doesn’t pay attention to Brook coming up behind him. He doesn’t startle or move away. Brook slides a hand into the golden strands of Sanji’s hair, and though he can’t feel the texture, he can feel the warmth of Sanji’s skin, comfortable and alive.

Carefully, and Brook is completely overwhelmed with how easy it is, Brook pushes Sanji’s face into the boiling water.

When he pulls back, Sanji’s face is only a skull.

He grins the way only skeletons can, the way that Brook sees in passing glances at mirrors. Brook can’t tell if he wants to scream or cry, isn’t sure if he’s capable of either, but he releases Sanji’s golden hair and runs out of the kitchen as though the horror he’s feeling won’t be able to follow him.

* * *

 

(Brook died once, and though he never mentions it, it was the worst experience of his entire life.

He can still feel the rattle of the poison in his lungs, the hollow ringing in his ears, and while he had been able to hold on and play piano for just long enough, his fingers were numb and sloppy by the end of it, hitting more notes than they missed. There is more on the Tone Dial than he ever plays, because he doesn’t want to ever listen to himself sob out his last breaths.

He doesn’t want to remember how he was supposed to keep them safe. He was their captain. Yorki told him to keep them safe.

But of all things, oh of all things, Brook does not want to remember Yorki.

- _his heart twists somewhere between his ribs and his sobbing turns more desperate as Brook quietly sings Binks’ Sake to ease his own passing, the words half-garbled through numb lips, as he remembers a strong, strident baritone singing along with him, and he chokes on the pain-_

He failed.

God, he failed to keep them safe.

What a surprise then, that he’s about to do it again.)

* * *

 

_Brook, you have to wake up!_

Something is wrong.

He can’t tell what it is anymore, but Brook remembers stopping at an island. They were there, and Brook remembers stepping off the ship, marveling aloud at the beauteous wonder of the huge trees there, the flowers with petals as large as his head. For all their size, everything was still almost delicate, shifting enticingly in the breeze.

They are not on an island anymore.

Now they are back on the Thousand Sunny, and Brook has just watched his crewmate die at Brook’s own hand, and the only thing he can think is that it would have come sooner or later. Sanji is very reckless. Better this way, safe and in his kitchen, surrounded by the things he loved most, than any other, right? At least he got the dignity of that choice, those circumstances.

Brook pauses in his anxious pacing.

Distantly, he feels like someone is trying to get his attention, and he sighs. That’s right, he can’t just leave it at that. He goes down to his bunk, pulls out his violin. Brook resins his bow with the uncaring ease that comes from long practice.

A dirge.

Sanji needs a dirge.

He puts bow to string and he plays.

* * *

 

After that, they fall one by one.

Brook is smart, at least. He takes them all down gently, easily. He goes for Zoro-

_(A passing thrust as he walks by Zoro, a hum as he slides his sword back into its sheath, and the Arrow Notch Strike takes another victim._

_It’s a little strange, Brook admits. Zoro is so typically on guard, his swords more of an instinctive part of him than any other, but Brook was able to bypass that. Maybe because Zoro doesn’t -didn’t- really consider him a threat. After all, Brook wasn’t even the one who got back his own shadow. Zoro was. But regardless, Zoro falls, knees first, the rest of him following after, and Brook can smell the wrong-hot-iron reek of fresh blood._

_He sheaths his sword, the hum of steel against wood a familiar and horrifying song. He’ll wait to play for the rest of them until afterwards. When it’s all done.)_

-first, because Zoro is the one most likely to find Sanji, and the most likely to attack Brook for it. After all, Zoro was Luffy’s first crewmember aside from Usopp-

_(This is not right, he insists, somewhere, deep inside of his ribcage. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Some of that finally breaks through the coating of ice that’s congealed around his soul, and Brook turns around as he sheathes his sword, looking back at Usopp’s body. Already, Usopp’s skin is greying and peeling away from his jaw, the smooth white of his teeth showing in patches through and through._

_Detached, Brook wonders if this is what watching his own body decay would have been like._

_Then, he looks away, leaving another body behind him to rot._

_What did it matter? They would all die before him anyway. At least like this, they got to be killed by one of their crew. A friend would be there beside them, helping them down into the dark, easy sleep of death._

_Brook’s been there many times. It’s nothing to be afraid of._

_If only he could just show them that.)_

-and Zoro and Usopp would be the most immediately protective. Luffy aside, that is, because Luffy would go crazy if he knew, and that’s why Brook is moving his slow, silent way towards the captain’s chambers, passing Robin-

_(Robin takes the cup of tea he offers her easily, no suspicion in her gaze. She smiles at him, and he repays it with a sword placed against her throat, a quiet warning. Robin stills, watches him with wide eyes._

_She is not surprised._

_She, like the others, does not make any move to defend herself. Instead, she continues sipping her tea, her throat working against the blade, and a few streams of red begins their slow slide down her skin, pooling in the hollows of her clavicles. Brook waits a few seconds longer, then, with a quiet apology, he pushes forward._

_Brook catches Robin as she falls, laying her down in the hall in a pose of at least some dignity. When he straightens from aligning her hands over her book, the floor is wet with tea and blood, and Robin’s bleached barebones smile at him in a garish mockery.)_

-and Chopper-

_(This much is at least more of mercy killing than any other. Chopper is such a gentle soul, he doesn’t need to see what Brook’s done_

_-and oh god what has Brook_ done-

_So at least, Brook makes this one fast and silent. He feels bad about the blood stains that Chopper’s medical texts get all over them, but, but, but. Chopper sags forward, and his fur is falling out, greying and disappearing in noxious waves as Brook lowers him down onto his desk, sliding his sword out and cleaning it. Good thing Brook really doesn’t need a doctor to stay alive. Or food. Or water. Or really anything! After all, he can’t be something he most decidedly is not._

_Chopper’s job will be done here soon._

_There will be no one else alive.)_

-and Franky-

_(His hands in Franky’s chest is a violation of the most intimate variety, and the cyborg’s head falls to rest against Brook’s bony shoulder as Brook shakily cuts the wires connecting his still very human heart to the rest of him. It thuds, desperate and loud, in his hands, and the feeling is phantom, something he feels only because he knows he’s supposed to._

_He’s supposed to be feeling Franky’s heart, beating bird-fast and large, slow until it becomes nothing more than a lump of warm flesh in his hands._

_Franky is immobile._

_Brook feels like he could be sick, and he swallows down the urge to vomit._

_He has nothing to do it with. There is nothing that would come up. He has no organs. He has no skin. He is only bone, and he, alone, remains. Testament to what happens.)_

-and Nami-

_(Nami looks up at him, her brown eyes wide and horrified, and Brook pats her on the cheek. He smiles, but he’s sure she can’t tell the difference right now, which is a shame. She would probably be a lot more comfortable if she could tell he was only trying to reassure her. Carefully, he adjusts his grip on his sword, pressing it just that much further through her. Right between two of her ribs._

_Predictably, Nami coughs, blood flecking the corners of her mouth._

_“Shh shh,” he says, reassuring, and Nami’s hand goes slack in his suit jacket. He catches it, catches her to lower her down too. “It’s just a short sleep. You won’t notice anything different, I promise.”_

_She gasps, a weak, watery thing. “Brook,” she says._

“Brook,” _a voice, distant, echoes, but when he looks again, she, too, is no more than a skeleton.)_

-and now there is no one to lead them from the fog. They’ll be waiting forever for Brook to join them, and he only hopes they can forgive him when he arrives.

* * *

 

It gets easier.

Well, easier in that Brook doesn’t know how to stop now that he’s begun, because they’re all dead. They’re all dead by his hands, in one way or another. Any crew he’s on is cursed, and he should never have-

Such bright people, such bright and happy people.

He never should have joined their crew.

(He should have stayed in the shadows forever. It’s all he deserves.)

_Brook, just hold on, it’s gonna be okay._

Looking up, Brook can’t place the source of the voice. He can’t figure out where it’s coming from, because as far as he knows, he’s completely alone.

Just like always.

From one ship to the next, Brook is always, always going to end up surrounded by the bodies of his fallen comrades, trying to muster up enough attention to clear their bones off the deck, saving their skulls for a proper burial. There’s grime everywhere, and Brook can’t seem to keep up with it. Even so, he’s sure he’ll get used to it, just as he did before. Honestly, he’s a little glad that his sense of smell is dead!

Just like the rest of him!

He chuckles to himself, quietly at first and then louder and louder until the walls of the ship ring with the sound of his voice.

His throat would hurt if he had one of those too.

Brook stills.

* * *

 

Luffy is easy. Sadly, disappointingly easy. Brook asks, in a serious voice, if he can have some help, and Luffy just stands up, nods, and follows him.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says, quiet and intense, and Brook can’t quite bring himself to meet his captain’s eyes. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll get us out of this alive.”

_Brook please you have to_

There’s something about the words, the tone of voice being not reasoning but reassuring, as though Brook was the one in danger, that just throws him off. He cocks his head to the side, trying to place the tone, but no, nothing, and so instead Brook can’t quite hold back the laugh he feels bubbling up inside him. “Captain, it’s a little late for me. And if it’s late for me, the rest of you aren’t far behind. Especially since you, Sanji, and Zoro are all hellbent on dying. It’s just easier for me to give you what you want. At least this way, it’s painless. And you know that the person doing it is on your side. I’m doing this for your sake,” he says, insistent, especially at Luffy’s skeptical face.

Skeptical or not, Luffy does not struggle when Brook ties his wrists together. He does not struggle when Brook leads him to the railing.

It’s a moment’s work to push him off the edge of the ship.

The straw hat floats.

The rest of Luffy does not.

* * *

 

he wants to wake up he wants to wake up this all has to be a bad dream

he just got this crew he can’t lose them already

again

again again

he can’t do this again

he was finally free he had finally moved on he can never die

he can at least give them what he can’t have.

* * *

 

He piles their bones in the center of the grass lawn on the Sunny, curls up and stares at them as though it will change what he’s looking at. Like maybe if he just watches long enough they, like him, will find their bodies and stand once more.

* * *

 

They do.

It begins as a slight motion, just a twitch as one of them gets an arm underneath them, and for a moment, Brook is almost happy. Because if they move, then he’s not alone, and he hasn’t ruined his crew. He hasn’t. It’s not his fault. But he looks up, expecting to see Luffy’s wide grin, Zoro’s fond eyeroll, something, anything, anything other than what he gets.

Anything but skulls and bones and the endless waste of skeletons.

It’s awful.

The lights in their eyes are completely foreign and strange and they surround Brook in rattling, chittering circles, the dry clack of bones against bones a sound that will haunt Brook for centuries to remain, and all the while, the endless cyclone of questions.

“Brook, why?”

“Why did you do this? We didn’t-”

“-shouldn’t have died, not now, not yet, what the fuck, dude-”

and he can’t get them to be quiet. It is too much and too quiet and Brook hates it and just wants them to shut up and go away and never leave him again and what has he done, what _has he done_. He is circled by the bones and corpses of his head crew and he loves them but _he did this_

_He did this to them, how could he?_

_This is what will happen._

Brook looks up.

Before him, a figure stands. They are indescribable, caught somewhere in an area of perception where Brooks very mind shies away from comprehending the very form of the being in front of him. He is aware of them being there. He is aware that they are looking at him. He can sense their eyes, but the details of them slide through his fingers like so many grains of sand, leaving only terror and gibbering incomprehension in their wake.

The figure moves closer to Brook, and he has to fight to stay in the same place, to not run away and never stop. _What will you do to prevent this?_

It is and is not a question. The empty sockets of his crew’s skulls stare back at him from their place behind the terrible being. They look like him, though where Brook has become used to his own horrifying appearance

“I would die a million times for them, to spare them a permanent death,” Brook grates out. “These people, these wonderful people, gave me back my life when I had been drifting for so long, and I will not let them stop here.”

The figure cocks their head to the side, and Brook can sense them staring. _Ah_ , he hears in a voice to great and terrible to understand. Brook clenches his jaw and tries to not shake into tiny fragments. _You are protected from me for a time, but one day, you too will come to rest. And in that moment, you will understand._

_Until then, let’s play a game. Will you win?_

_Or will I?_

And then Brook wakes up.

* * *

   

“Brook!!”

It’s Luffy. Luffy is calling him, and Brook reaches out, grasps warm, living flesh, and opens his eyes. He is scared of what he’ll find. He’s scared that this is just another run-through of them going around and him killing them all again and he can’t stand it. But still he opens his eyes. Still he looks up from his prone position.

He meets Luffy’s worried gaze.

And beyond him, the rest of the crew waits. Sanji, Zoro, and Franky have established a perimeter, keeping an eye towards the forest and the sea. The sea that barely covers the sound of Chopper wailing in the distance about how he’s not sure how to treat Brook because Brook’s dead and a skeleton and doesn’t even have a pulse, and doesn’t quite cover Robin’s quiet reassurances, though he can’t hear the exact words. Usopp and Nami hover behind Luffy’s shoulder. Luffy’s arm is in his hand.  

They are all alive.

Slowly, Brook smiles. He knows there is no visible difference, but he feels the change regardless. Luffy seems to as well, as he focuses his attention back down at Brook and a smile stretches across his face. He covers Brook’s cold, skeletal hand with his warm one, squeezing the fingers so hard Brook hears them creak, but Brook can feel him shaking. It’s okay.

“Brook! You’re okay!” Luffy's voice is filled with relief, and something terribly close to tears, and really, that's unacceptable. Luffy shouldn't be crying over something like this.

“I’m right here, Luffy-san,” Brook agrees, raspily. “Sorry for worrying everyone. What happened?”

The story, as he gets it from Robin later, when they’re far away from the island on the Sunny, is that there were plants that caused everyone to hallucinate their deaths, but when they died, they woke up. She and Chopper hypothesize that since Brook is already dead, the release backfired and kept him trapped in the dream.

“Which really makes me wonder,” Robin says, eyeing Brook out of the corner of her eye. “How _did_ you escape?”

Brook feels himself still. He remembers

_bleached bones and skull all cackling wildly and staring at him asking him why why why_

all of what happened, but the memory of the being he encountered… He will never be able to forget. Just as he was never able to forget the first time he died where he was turned gently away. The figure is right. One day, Brook will be able to join Death’s cold embrace. But Brook is going to ensure that he is the first Strawhat to be there, so he can greet the others and know he kept them from it as long as possible.

But for now, Brook only smiles. “Aah, well, you know. These old bones just can’t stay still for long.”

Robin raises an eyebrow, but she lets it go, the smell of tea wafting from their mugs as they stand side-by-side. It mixes with the scent of sunlight, varnish, and sea air, and Brook breathes it in, in, with lungs he does not have and he opens the eyes he does not possess to look over his crew, safe and alive. And he’s going to keep them that way.

No matter how he has to do it. They’re his crew. And Brook will protect his crew with his very life.

Brook pulls out his violin, puts the bow to the strings, and plays.


End file.
